The company will initially focus its efforts on organizations using industrial control systems (ICS) such as energy, oil and gas, and critical manufacturing.

Leveraging its 20-years of experience securing high-assurance environments, Forcepoint will deliver a portfolio of integrated, behavioral-based cybersecurity products with content relevant for the industrial space, focusing initially on network security solutions designed to bring more visibility to industrial control systems.

Connecting operational technology (OT) such as ICS and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems to the IT network can offer new levels of functionality, cost savings and transparency to take advantage of big data and analytical insights.

This dependence on connected devices also exponentially expands the attack surface of the OT environment within critical infrastructure. The combination of sophisticated attackers understanding how to disrupt a physical process with the frequency of attacks targeting users with trusted access to sensitive information compound the challenges facing CISOs and industrial plant operators to define ownership of these areas.

“By 2021, 70 percent of OT security will be managed directly by the CIO, chief information security officer (CISO) or chief security officer (CSO) departments, up from 35 percent today,” according to a Gartner report.

“The relative ease and low-cost of cyber attacks across borders today is leading to a crisis in critical infrastructure, where both the information technology and operational side of the house have to come together quickly,” said Sean Berg, senior vice president and general manager for Global Governments and Critical Infrastructure at Forcepoint. “These industries provide essential services that underpin society, and they need to control access to the plant or electric grid to protect their users and critical data. The most effective, holistic approach requires behavioral insight to automatically provide security countermeasures without impacting availability to prevent intrusion into critical systems.”

Forcepoint’s critical infrastructure offerings build on the company’s decades of experience providing security solutions that protect sensitive government networks and secure connectivity between these networks and the internet.

In addition, long-time OT security veteran, David Hatchell, who will report to Berg, has been named vice president of critical infrastructure and will lead the new Forcepoint business unit. Hatchell formerly led the critical infrastructure practice at Intel/McAfee and Belden.